Our relationship with God begins at the cross of Christ. But it is also where it continues. We never leave the need for the cross in our lives. The cross is the only means we have for winning the victory over our sin nature. It must be put to death and the only place that happens is at the cross. As disciples of Christ we take up our cross daily for that purpose.

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Show Notes:

As Christians we generally see the cross as a one-time event that we associate with our initial salvation experience. Yet once we have already believed and confessed that Yeshua (Jesus) died on the cross for our sins, we often find ourselves struggling with condemnation over the fact that we still have sin in our lives. The feeling we have, and even the teaching we get in churches, is that once we are saved, we are not supposed to have problems with sin anymore.

To deal with this we need to relate to the cross differently. Christ bore our sins in His body one time on the cross so that we might die to sin, but our own death to sin and the removal of our sin nature is not instantaneous at the moment we first accept Christ. To be a disciple of the Lord, we must daily take up His cross as our own and follow on with Him. There must be an ongoing relationship with the cross in our lives.

The process of the Christian life includes a daily visit and encounter with the cross. We need to go back daily to the reality of the cross, to that place where sin is defeated and put to death. Just as Christ put sin to death in His body by hanging on the cross, we go back to that cross and make sure that sin is put to death in our body. As believers today we can take faith to mature and grow in this ability to be His disciples. Learn how to take up your cross and follow Him. Let it be a daily experience with His cross.

Key Verses:

• Luke 9:23. “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must … take up his cross daily and follow Me.”
• Luke 14:27. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
• 1 Peter 2:24. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross.”
• Romans 6:1–18. “Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
• Romans 8:1. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
• Philippians 3:8–12. “I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”
• Colossians 3:3–10 (HCSV). “Put to death what belongs to your worldly nature.”

Quotes:

• “I know we desire to grow in God and to mature in the things of the Lord, but many times maturity begins with the elementary expressions of what we know and what we must do.”
• “This war can only be won by the cross. There was no defeat of sin and unrighteousness other than through Yeshua. And if you’re going to master sin, you’re going to do it at that cross, and you’re going to do it daily.”
• “What is the obedience? It’s to go to the cross and to immerse ourselves once again in the blood of Yeshua as the victory over sin and death and commit ourselves to this way of life that He has opened up for us, which is to be instruments of righteousness.”

Takeaways:

1. We recognize that the cross is not something that we just experience on the day of our salvation and becoming a Christian. It is something that we experience daily to see the defeat of everything of sin.
2. We put to death the old nature and the unrighteousness that still battles against us. We bring it to an end. And we have the ability and the tool to do that in the cross. There is no condemnation because we find ourselves in these struggles. We simply recognize we have been provided with the answer.
3. The cross is daily, continuously the victory of Christ given and provided by God over the things of sin and the flesh. And we as believers today will mature and grow into an ability to be His disciples because we understand how to daily take up our cross and follow Him.